The World Bank Group is aiming to develop new measures to enhance its financial capacity and have its board decide on them at its next spring meetings in April 2018, a spokesman for the institution said.

Iran's Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Masoud Karbasian arrived in Washington at the head of a delegation to attend the 2017 Annual joint meeting of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

One of the 11 areas that the World Bank (WB)’s Doing Business (DB) report includes in ranking a country’s business environment is paying taxes. The background study for DB 2017, Paying Taxes 2016 claims that its emphasis is “on efficient tax compliance and straightforward tax regimes”.

The World Bank (WB) raised its economic growth forecasts for developing East Asia and Pacific for this year and 2018, but added the generally positive outlook was clouded by risks such as rising trade protectionism and geopolitical tensions.

Malaysia, and to a lesser degree Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, remain more exposed to exchange rate risk than other developing economies in East Asia and the Pacific as global financial conditions tighten, the World Bank said. World Bank Chief Economist East Asia and Pacific Sudhir Shetty spoke on ‘Bloomberg Markets’.